Michigan Basketball: 3 takeaways from win over Prairie View A&M

Michigan basketball improved to 2-0 on Saturday night against Prairie View A&M and here are three takeaways from the Wolverines win. 

For the second time this season, the Michigan basketball team hit the road playing Prairie View A&M as part of the Coaches vs Racism Classic in Washington, D.C.

Obviously, it wasn’t much of a challenge for the Wolverines and they cruised to a 77-49 victory. The defense was solid and posted a points per possession rating of .66 but the offense wasn’t all that spectacular and 77 points was kind of disappointing, as well as the 1.04 points per possession.

But at the same time, Juwan Howard is trying to find the right combination of players and it does feel like this team will be more of a work in progress, at least in terms of finding its identity.

Here are three takeaways from Michigan’s win.

Too many turnovers

Michigan started and built leads of 11-2 and then eventually 21-7 in the first half. Caleb Houstan hit one of his three triples early and Hunter Dickinson was dominating.

But then, Michigan got a little sloppy. Both Dickinson and Houstan finished with four turnovers and the Wolverines had 19 total. That’s 30 in two games for Michigan basketball, which is somewhat concerning, although Prairie View averages 11 steals per game.

The good news is that DeVante Jones wasn’t one who had turnover issues. He scored 10 points, dished out five assists, and turned it over just once. That was on top of eight rebounds and also just one foul after picking up five on Wednesday.

Some of this is likely getting the rotation figured out and also a result of having some more athletic players will less ball-handling capabilities. Houstan and Moussa Diabate had six turnovers combined and nine of the 19 were from freshmen.

Dickinson shows his 3-ball

Hunter Dickinson has been flashing his right-handed hook shot and also a new little pull-up floater coming off the pick-and-roll. He’s definitely added to the repertoire but on Saturday he finally connected on his first 3-pointer as a Wolverine.

Dickinson set the tone inside too and he didn’t play all that much (24 minutes). Dickinson was 5-for-8 from the field and grabbed 10 rebounds, as well as dishing out three assists. But the turnovers need to be cleaned up and he was 0 of 3 at the line.

Wolverines are a work in progress

Michigan is the sixth-ranked team in the country and is expected to contend for and win the Big Ten title. But it’s going to take some time to get his machine humming.

This squad has six freshmen plus a graduate transfer playing point guard and at times, it has looked a little disjointed.

At some point, Howard will probably look to tighten up his rotation but these games are a great chance to play guys like Kobe Bufkin, Frankie Collins, and others.

And there are going to be growing pains, even with guys like Diabate and Houstan. But this team is also going to grow by leaps and bounds.

It’s all part of the process and Tuesday’s game against Seton Hall will be the first true test of the 2021-22 season and we’ll see how U-M handles it.